Now Busoni can do, on
the pianoforte, whatever he can conceive; the question is, what can he
conceive? As he sat at the piano playing Chopin, I thought of Busoni, of
the Bechstein piano, of what fingers can do, of many other extraneous
things, never of Chopin. I saw the pianist with the Christ-like head,
the carefully negligent elegance of his appearance, and I heard
wonderful sounds coming out of the Bechstein piano; but, try as hard as
I liked, I could not feel the contact of soul and instrument, I could
not feel that a human being was expressing himself in sound. A task was
magnificently accomplished, but a new beauty had not come into the
world. Then the Kreutzer Sonata began, and I looked at Ysaye, as he
stood, an almost shapeless mass of flesh, holding the violin between his
fat fingers, and looking vaguely into the air. He put the violin to his
shoulder. The face had been like a mass of clay, waiting the sculptor's
thumb. As the music came, an invisible touch seemed to pass over it; the
heavy mouth and chin remained firm, pressed down on the violin; but the
eyelids and the eyebrows began to move, as if the eyes saw the sound,
and were drawing it in luxuriously, with a kind of sleepy ecstasy, as
one draws in perfume out of a flower.
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